to be in a city which is so inclussive. so without forth delay i would like to welcome you on behalf of mator's office of neighborhood services. mayor lee will be joining us later. with the invocations, we would like to invite pastor stacey kerns. >> good amp. let us pause for a moment to invite the presence of god. shall we pray together? god, our help in ages past, our hope in years to come, we invite your holy presence to bless this celebration of african-american history month. we give up thanks and praise for the legacy, the creativity, the genius and contributions of african-american people everywhere. we pray that you would strengthen this organization and strengthen all organizations that support telling the story of black history.

and so today we ask that as we continue on the journey. that we might be able to do justice, love kindness, and walk hummably -- humbly with our god. may you bless this time together and all god's children say amen, amen, amen. >> and now if you would stand for "lift every voice and sing," sung by leah suites. >> ok. everyone can join in with me. ♪ lift every voice and sing ♪ tell up in heaven rings ♪ rings with a harmony of

liberty ♪ ♪ let our rejoicing rise high as the listening sky ♪ ♪ let every sound loud as a roar -- rolling sea ♪ ♪ sing a song full of the faith that the horde has brought -- brought us ♪ ♪ sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us ♪ ♪ facing the rising sun of a new day begun ♪

♪ let us march on to victory ♪ ♪ as one [applause] >> thank you. i'm al williams, president of the board of the san francisco african-american historical society. we'd like to join, and trevor, in welcoming you all to this annual 2011 kickoff program for black history month. first of all i'd like to say that the chairs to my right are vacant and will be filled shortly. the mayor will be arriving about 11:30. he had another engagement that he was they'd at. and supervisors -- he was delayed at. and supervisors -- no, that's

not them -- miracle arim aye and coyne are in committee and i understand they will be finishing up shortly and then they will be joining us to bring greetings. i want to thank pastor curran and ms. suites for their participation in the program. and ms. suites with her wonderful voice, we use this program as an opportunity to present cameos of people who are otherwise engraged shall -- engaged in black history month programs and ms. suites is going to be appearing next tuesday, february 8 at yoshii's. and of course pastor is appearing weekly and a couple times sunday at jones united methodist church. so let's certainly visit and support her at jones united

memorial methodist church. i'd like to take a moment to thank the members of the committee for their support and participation. as i always say, something like this cannot happen without a committee of people involved. with us today, trevor hunnicut, who started the program off, who say member of the board of drorves the society. lamont bishop is a stalwart member -- where are you? in the back. he's a represent of senator mark leno's office. b.j. jones from public utilities commission is here. stewart. from the public library. and pete fitzsimmons and tannish col -- hollins and camille dawkins. camille is over here. without camille and tannish rkt

, none of this happens. so let's give them a round of applause for their wonderful effort. the society's primary mission is to enlighten, to inform, to inspire and to empower. we achieve that mission in a variety of ways. almost always in partnership with others. through our current partnership that trevor spoke to with the finance -- kinsey foundation shall the san francisco public library, and the california council of the humanities, we are now hosting an incredible exhibition of art and artifacts from the kinsey collection, the kron -- that chronicles the story of people of frick desnent america. if you haven't done so you owe it to yourself and particularly to your children to visit and see this important exhibit which is at our library in the frake american --

african-american art and culture complex at 762 bolton street. the posters you see here are examples of elements in that exhibit. these are actual objects that are part of the kinsey collection that are on display in our exhibit. bernard i'm sure will touch on the collection during his remarks. our speaker, bernard kinsey, is one half of team kinsey. the other half is his lovely wife shirley, so please join me in welcoming shirley kinsey who is with us today also. stand up, shirley. now, my notes go on to say that a few years ago we had a wonderful opportunity to work with supervisors mirkarimi and are lee on the adoption of san francisco's slavery disclosure ordinance and we're looking forward to having is the same kind of experience with

supervisor coyne as she moves forward in legislation with us the we're very excited about that undertakele -- taking. that was supposed to lead to a nice little smooth transition for them to make remarks. since they are not here -- somebody's coming, i'm told. on cue, supervisor coyne, right on cue is here. supervisor malia cohen, ladies and gentlemen. >> thank you. hello. happy black history month. -- month. how are you good. thank you for coming out here this morning. i'm so excited to be here. there have been many years that have come and gone in the past that i was in these seats over here listening to the speakers commemorate, honor the memory

and legacy of many of our an set of erps and the persons that have gone on before us and it is about time that we started to think about the legacy that african-americans have had and the legacy that the civil war has had and the intermingling between the two because it is with no easy feat that over 200,000 african-american soldiers fought in the civil war during a time when african-americans were denied the right of course their citizenship. can you imagine that? so i'm very excited to welcome you here to our great city hall. and as i stand before you, i want you to understand that i am your represent and if you have a chance to stop by before you leave and leave your

contact information, so we are able to better communicate and keep the lines of communication open. ed high -- the high -- rm importance of plaque history months also reminds us of the power of all americans united and working together. oftentimes with the census data that's been released people have been spending a lot of time lamenting that the african-american pop lakes is at 3.9% and i am really here to encourage you that our numbers may be diminishing but we are also here, present and we are still strofpblgt we don't need to have huge numbers but we must remain engaged in order to make sure to we remain relevant. the last two years have been a meaningful time for all of us with obama in the administration. i'm personally very proud of the work that he has done, that

we have done here in san francisco among a wide array of voters and to be elected by what many consider the last batchtyon of president african-american community in after, it is a special honor to be here today buff. thank you very much. >> thank you, supervisor. supervisor mirkarimi is here with us but before he calms -- comes up -- comes up i want to mention ralph lewin, with the california huh-uh -- humanities council here with us also. we have a number of other elected and appointed officialed and at i said to them earlier, i was ansigned the task of introducing -- i was ansigned the tasking introducing them and don't have the list but i was specifically threatened bim dr. torea moses

if i didn't many introduce him. ing [laughter] or without further ado, supervisor ross mirkarimi. >> i'll make my statements we -- very quick. i just came out of charing the public safety committee meeting. there's a lot be to talk about. i want to say another happy congratulations on black history month here in san francisco. this has been i think a very auspicious haft few months of course in seeing the ascendancy of our district attorney, kamela harris, rise to attorney general in the state of california. certainly of course ases to the

incredible impact of advancing the issues much import to all of us, joining the board, supervisor malia cop henn. and we continue to see great challenges, nationally and internationally and president obama and his quarterback effort to continue to retain as best he can as republicans allow him to, our continued enthusiasm for his ongoing leadership. but in san francisco, reference has been made to this earlier, why we do celebrate many of the advancements of people who rise to positions of power and stature is certainly well noticed, i think we also have to use this opportunity, black history month, to retrench on a couple of key points. one is we have to be very clear about the fact that if he -- if

we really want to speak to the question, i think, of black edoseous from a cosmopolitan city like san francisco, then we also must speak to the questions of what are we going to do about the hi recidivism rate in california so that there is meaningful rell entry and reintegration back into our communities? what are we going to did to he will everybody ain't the standards of our public schools so that the truancy and dropout rate is stemmed so that the kids can stay in school and be? school. these are the opportunities i hear as we celebrate black history month, especially the residents of the fillmore and the western addition, as people know it in both ways, that has struggled through decade of urban renewal and through its own chals that we're reminded here in the city of san

francisco that these challenges wrb certainly ones we are confronted by every day but amazing things are happening here. we have just now selected our first chinese-american, asian-american mayor in the city of san francisco. [applause] on the board of supervisors, 11 of us, eight of us, eight members of the board of supervisors are people of color. this is true representation. but what has laid the foundation of the great muscle that has made san francisco well known in its reputation as being forward thinking also obligates us to answering the other questions some of the chals that i remarked on especially as it concerns the african-american population in after. i'm not so sure that the numbers really have dropped to 3.%. that's a quick drop from 6.2 two years ago. but whatever the case is, that decline in population is a healthy reminder that even the

most forward-thinking cities have incredible work to do. thank you, everybody, and happy black history month. >> thank you, supervisors cohen and mirkarimi. just want to announce also that thanks to the efforts of lamont bishop and others, we do have for the kinseys proclamations or certificates of recognition for shirley and bernard kinsey from senator leno's office, is ash asem blipman ma and we have those and had present them to them later in the program. we'd like to now turn to the -- to our presentation by the -- i'm blanking -- the omnira

institute, who will perform for us at this point. the mirror institute. ♪ [drumming] ♪ ♪

[applause] [drumming]

thank you. omnira institute. they're going to be porping around at a number of locations in black history month. check them out on line too. they do a phenomenal piece of taking frick music and showing parallels in aof -- some of the african-american gospel. when you can sing those two things in tandem and how they relate to each other. columbia of other mentions we have. naomi kelly was with us. purchaser naomi kelly was here. she is approaching reverend dr. amos brown, former supervisor brown, who is also here with us. of course i really would get assassinated if i don't mention commissioner leroy king, sit -- sitting with former redevelopment commissioner benny yee.

welcome, kim. we are really looking forward to working with kim to get students to come visit the kinsey exhibit. just one second. and also supervisor scott winer -- weiner is here also. let's welcome him. newly elected schedule. we're back on schedule and graced with the presence of our new mayor. we, as i mentioned earlier, we had the pleasure of working well. are city administrator at the time ed lee and supervisor ross mirkarimi in connection with the adoption of the slavery disclosure ordinance a couple years ago. and we look forward to working with him on many issues to come. please welcome mayor ed lee. >> hello, everybody.

you know i don't like to read speeches. i've been doing that in the past, so i want to have a chance to speak from the heart. this is our celebration of black history month. and i am so happy to see all of you come to city hall to recognize this and to recognize the great work that pat williams is doing because about the stories that need to be told. and i, as my life becomes unfolding in front of a lot of other people you're going to hear about me and i want you to know there's a lot of part of the black community that has to do in my peam and gsh famed -- family and so i want to tell you a story. it's a true one. so when i was growing up in the projects in seattle, washington, my neighbors were black. we had businesses in the black community because that's where we could start. that's where my dad was able to cook in restaurants. and there was a gentleman who

owned the gas station. his name was darnell. and he came to the restaurant every day to have his meal and to support my father's struggle as he tried to make that restaurant business succeed. well, it was during those times that i learned very quickly observing things in the restaurant who were the gp friends to my father and who was just business and constituents. and i formed a very, very solid idea of where we were from at a very, very early start. and when my dad suddenly died after a heart attack, darnell was the first person that offered my brother a job at his gas station. these are the kinds of stories that need to be told because it is not just about recognizing african-americans, it's about what african-americans have

been doing for us as a society for many, many years. so when i have a chance to talk about my life because i'm just new rookie payor, wants to know how am i thinking, where am i coming from, i'm going to tell about these stories that never get told because they're about life. they're about contributions. they're about how we relate to each other and so i am so proud to be up here with malia cohen, who is going to create many, many new stories to come along with all of san francisco and the other supervisors up here and the oop leaders and al williams and the historical society who are doing very important work to document the contributions so that we can justify why we need to make a special effort to make sure that there is no outmigration, to make sure that there are jobs. to make sure we protect the family structure. because from my heart and where i come from and what my family is all about, i know what it is

to be helped by the african-american community. i know that that's been a strong tring and -- thing and we wouldn't have survived without that kind of kep -- help. so i leave you here today to let you know what's in my heart and mind and let's kick off this celebration to unite everybody in this city and be broud -- proud of who we are, and thank you very much. >> thank you, mayor lee. we are about to bring up our keynote speaker. but i did want to mention we also have with us david campos who's joined us. let's welcome supervisor camp ovements and dr. veronica hunnicutt is here also the so with that we're at the point where we really want to get to the real meat of this thing today, our key note speaker. i mentioned earlier we've had a strong partnership with bring the exhibition we have now with the kinsey collection through

the kinsey foundation and no stronger partner could we have had than the san francisco public library under the leadership of luis herrera. luis has been -- let's give luis a -- [applause] luis has been a real up toer in standing with us in doing what's necks -- necessary to make this happen. stuart shaw, ann carroll is back there. everett, the people in the production department who have helped us. you will see all the hard work they have provideded when you go over to check this exhibit. so without further ado i would like to have luis introduce our keynote speaker. >> thank you, al. what a glorious day it is and happy black history month. i'm honored to introduce our